American Politics

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2830938]I wouldn't vote for Trump for dog catcher, let alone president Tooms. Nor would I vote for Biden. [/QUOTE]Then you might as well vote directly for Trump. With the cactus, tumbleweed, rattlesnake and outhouse Red State Repub-advantaged Electoral College election rigging in place, any vote not cast or not cast for a Dem more often than not ultimately helps a Repub win. But you knew that already.

[QUOTE]But yes, I admire some of Trump's policies and actions more than Elvis and Cali Guy put together. For example, the changes in the corporate tax in the TCJA that he signed into law. And the way he pushed approval of the COVID vaccines through the FDA. And Operation Warp speed. Contrast to the abysmal failure of the Biden administration in supporting COVID testing during the Omicron wave and in doing something about the extreme shortage of many cancer drugs right now. Biden's FDA shut down our main supplier of cisplatin and carboplatin. People are dying as a result. [b]President Trump never would have let that happen. [/b]Yeah he may have sponsored the occasional super spreader event. But nobody's perfect.[/QUOTE]So-called president Trump's decisions contrary to all expert warnings not to do something so stupid and dangerous in 2018 and 2019 not only let Trump's Pandemic happen but his 2020 year long dismissal of its spread as a "HOAX", mocking known and proven mitigation measures and lies about how it was already disappearing and disappearing without a vaccine so nobody needed to bother wasting time and money inventing one or taking one made sure with absolute certainty that it would be as historically damaging and economically disastrous as it was.

But you knew that already too.

And, at which point, so much for any phantom or perceived net economic benefit to anyone of that piddling tax cut.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2831096]And, at which point, so much for any phantom or perceived net economic benefit to anyone of that piddling tax cut.[/QUOTE]The federal rate went from 35% to 21%. That's a 40% reduction. We went from the highest corporate income tax rate (state + federal) in the developed world to the middle of the pack. That's not piddling. The corporate cut and other provisions in the TCJA like the GILTI tax on foreign earnings of USA Companies, were badly needed to encourage our companies to add jobs and investment in the USA instead of other countries. And this last fiscal year tax receipts on corporate income were close to an all time high! Thank you President Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA!

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]Yes, non-lethal assistance after the non-provoked Russia's invasion of Crimea and Donbass. That cowardice has come back to bite us in the ass because if we had armed Ukraine to the teeth, the February 24 wouldn't have happened.[/QUOTE]Arm Ukraine to the teeth before February 24? Yeah, confirm Putin's paranoia, execute the Cuban missile crisis in reverse, risk World War III, that's the ticket!

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]Indisputably, no less! The first sentence in your link says it is a disputed referendum. The article goes on listing numerous issues with this so-called referendum. Did you even read it?

But sure, why not advocate a so-called "referendum" held under the guidance of Russian armed forces and intelligence agencies.[/QUOTE]You well know from my earlier posts, including the correction, that I was referring to post referendum polls, conducted by western polling organizations like Gallup.

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]Read:

Did NATO Promise Not to Enlarge? Gorbachev Says "No".

[URL]https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2014/11/06/did-nato-promise-not-to-enlarge-gorbachev-says-no[/URL]

TL; DR.

NO, Baker has never ever, ever, ever, ever, but wait, let me repeat once again -- ever -- promised Gorbachev or anyone else that NATO wouldn't expand eastward.

And did I fucking say NEVER?

Whatever they were discussing was in the terms "what if". No promises were given. Ever!

Here is the interview with Gorbachev. Will that be enough for you to stop this nonsense?

[URL]https://www.rbth.com/international/2014/10/16/mikhail_gorbachev_i_am_against_all_walls_40673.html[/URL][/QUOTE]I'm confused. You want me to read a link that you say is so long you didn't read it?

Where did I or my link say that Baker promised Gorbachev anything? Where did I even mention Baker? The words we used were assurance and commitment. YOUR link quotes Gorbachev using the same word, assurance:

"The decision for the USA And its allies to expand NATO into the east was decisively made in 1993. I called this a big mistake from the very beginning. It was definitely a violation of the spirit of the statements and assurances made to us in 1990. ".

Here's Gorbachev in 2008:

[B]The Americans promised that Nato wouldn't move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.[/B]

[URL]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1933223/Gorbachev-US-could-start-new-Cold-War.html[/URL]

Here's another quote, from Gorbachev, from 2009:

[B]Kohl, US Secretary of State James Baker and others assured me that NATO would not move an inch east. The Americans didn't stick to that, and the Germans didn't care. Maybe they even rubbed their hands at how well the Russians were ripped off. What did it bring? It's just that the Russians no longer trust Western promises.[/B]

[URL]https://www.bild.de/politik/2009/bild-medienpreis/die-deutschen-waren-nicht-aufzuhalten-7864098.bild.html[/URL]

The assurances about NATO enlargement didn't just come from Baker and weren't directed solely to Gorbachev on the Russian side. They also came from George H. W. Bush, Helmut Kohl, Robert Gates, and others. See my prior link to the National Security Archive / George Washington University link.

You'll undoubtedly find a lot of neocons and Russia hawks and overly legalistic types who agree with you. More historians would probably come down on my side.

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]I could rant and rant about your hypocrisy (Russia and her proxies have KILLED the economy of Donbass in the last 9 years; it's one ghost town after another now), but since you don't insert "indisputably" I'll let it slip.[/QUOTE]Here's an article from the strongly pro-Ukraine Kyiv Post in November, 2019:

[URL]https://www.kyivpost.com/post/7557[/URL]

At that point in time, only 5.1% of people living in Russia-controlled parts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions wanted Ukraine to regain control over the territories under the old terms. Fifty-one percent wanted a union with Russia and another 13.4% wanted accession to Russia with special status.

Philosophically, I don't believe a federal government run by people like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and AOC should impose Green-New-Deal-Like legislation on Texas, if Texas doesn't want it. And Texas governor Greg Abbott shouldn't impose restrictions on abortion on Austin, if Austinites don't want that. Same principal. Since you seem inclined to use the "f" word for emphasis, I shall too. Let the people do what they fucking want. If Crimeans and people in occupied Donbas (pre-2022) want to be part of Russia anyway, why not encourage the Ukrainians to make that part of a solution to this madness?

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]All Russia's GDP is in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Russia is a 3rd world country everywhere outside a few large cities. Very soon it'll be a failed state. Every part of Russia-occupied territory in Ukraine is a hot mess, and it was a mess long before the war started. [/QUOTE]Malarkey. See the GDP figures from 2018 from this.

[URL]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_GDP_per_capita[/URL]

Russian nominal GDP per capita was 11,290 USD. Moscow oblast has a population of about 8. 5 million and Leningrad 1. 7 million. The population of Russia is 143 million. Exclude Moscow and Leningrad, do the math, and nominal GDP only drops from 11,290 USD / person to 10,595/ per person, still two or three times Ukraine's. As to "Very soon (Russia will) be a failed state," that's not likely.

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138]They have? Well, FDR wasn't anti-war when the choice was to fight Hitler or let him have his fun. Maybe Democrats know what wars are worth fighting and what wars are unnecessary like Iraq. I wonder if you remember the administration that started that war.[/QUOTE]I'm a semi-pacifist. If Americans had viewed the world like I do, we wouldn't have gotten into World War I, the Vietnam War or the Iraq War. So what I wrote, that Democrats are somewhat more anti-war than Republicans, was a compliment to Democrats from my perspective.

Since you bring up Hitler, if he'd had 6000 nuclear warheads, many pointed at the USA, when he was backed up against a wall in his bunker in Berlin during the final days of WWII, do you think he would have used them? You appear to view Putin as irrational, so I don't know why this isn't a concern to you. Maybe you should be more worried about this possibility than I am. I view him as rational, nationalistic, and paranoid.

If Russia had pumped $100 billion into support for Iraq and Afghanistan during the Bush/Obama/Trump war on terror, would you have said Russia was doing the right thing?

[QUOTE=Xpartan;2829138] Very soon it'll be a failed state.[/QUOTE]However I have to admit, reluctantly, that if Prigozhin had marched all the way into Moscow and civil war broke out, you'd look pretty damn smart. Or psychic.

[QUOTE=Tiny 12;2831195]However I have to admit, reluctantly, that if Prigozhin had marched all the way into Moscow and taken control, you'd look pretty damn smart. Or psychic. [/QUOTE]
But perhaps the real beauty of that chess move/stratagem (we'll call it, the Prigozhin gambit), was brilliant in a way, so much so, that it perhaps had the desired effect, without having to march all the way to Moscow.

To the world watching, it exposed Putin for the the coward, weakened and frightened "strongman", that he really is and provided the necessary chink in the armour, that all the circling sharks, need to finished the job.

[QUOTE=Spidy;2831199]But perhaps the real beauty of that chess move/stratagem (we'll call it, the Prigozhin gambit), was brilliant in a way, so much so, that it perhaps had the desired effect, without having to march all the way to Moscow.

To the world watching, it exposed Putin for the the coward, weakened and frightened "strongman", that he really is and provided the necessary chink in the armour, that all the circling sharks, need to finished the job.[/QUOTE]It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Will Prigozhin survive the next 30 days? It is amazing that he advanced as far as he did with no resistance from anyone except the Air Force. Ironically, some believe the head of the Air Force, Surovikin, and some other generals were in on the scheme or at least aware of it, which Prigozhin had been planning for weeks. He supposedly had to accelerate the time line when word leaked of his plans to oust the heads of the military. I don't remember where I read this, but it was coming from American government sources.

You might want to take a look at Xpartan's posts over in the Stupid Kyiv thread. While perhaps fanciful they're a good read and some of it kind of fits with your view.

This is the reason I am against both sides of the political spectrum in USA, bcos people and views like this have been shut down.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5r0rDzynw[/URL]

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2831139]The federal rate went from 35% to 21%. That's a 40% reduction. We went from the highest corporate income tax rate (state + federal) in the developed world to the middle of the pack. That's not piddling. The corporate cut and other provisions in the TCJA like the GILTI tax on foreign earnings of USA Companies, were badly needed to encourage our companies to add jobs and investment in the USA instead of other countries. And this last fiscal year tax receipts on corporate income were close to an all time high! Thank you President Trump, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA![/QUOTE]The failure of major corporate or top marginal tax rate cuts to contribute much if anything to the economy, much less "create jobs" in any meaningful way, has been well known and documented since forever.

[B]Profits Without Prosperity[/B]

[URL]https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity[/URL]

[B]Why Dont Jobs and Corporate Profits Match Up?[/B]

[URL]https://business.time.com/2011/06/03/why-dont-jobs-and-corporate-profits-match-up/[/URL]

[B]Searching for supply-side effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act[/B]

[URL]https://www.brookings.edu/articles/searching-for-supply-side-effects-of-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/[/URL]

These latest Repub Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts were no exception to that repeated and utterly predictable result.

Yes, thank you so-called president Trump, Paul Ryan, Moscow Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA! But let's not leave out a big thank you to Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, whose similar agenda with their wonderful tax policies all produced similar Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions, Great Repub Skyrocketing Unemployment Rates, Great Repub Job Losses and zero sustained boom times, historic expansions or historic sustained job gains.

[QUOTE=JustTK;2831219]This is the reason I am against both sides of the political spectrum in USA, bcos people and views like this have been shut down.

[URL]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-5r0rDzynw[/URL][/QUOTE]How exactly has this person been "shut down"? He has 1. 2 M subscribers on Youtube. How are his (kooky, conspiritorial) views being suppressed? And by whom?

Since Repubs seem to love conspiracy theories (like the 2020 presidential election was stolen, Chinese thermostats changed votes from Trump to Biden, Jewish space lasers cause forest fires, etc) they ought to chew on this: In September of 2019, the one-term, twice-impeached, twice-indicted, former-guy let funding run out for PREDICT, the USAID project tasked with [I]predicting[/I] the viruses that had the potential to turn into pandemics. Several months later, COVID appeared. Coincidence? Could be. It is at least as likely as Hunter Biden's laptop being fruitful.

[QUOTE=JohnClayton;2831236]How exactly has this person been "shut down"? He has 1. 2 M subscribers on Youtube. How are his (kooky, conspiritorial) views being suppressed? And by whom?[/QUOTE]I am talkig about JFK. People and views like his have been shut down. Examples, Bernie S, RFK. Did you listen to the JFK speech? You simply cannot speak like that these days. You will be sidelined or ignored, bcos mainstream media is owned now by the loigarchs and simply parrots their narrative.

[QUOTE=JohnClayton;2831236]How exactly has this person been "shut down"? He has 1. 2 M subscribers on Youtube. How are his (kooky, conspiritorial) views being suppressed? And by whom?[/QUOTE]I think JustTK's referring to JFK. He's got a good point. Kennedy kept our involvement in Vietnam limited. Only 191 Americans died there while Kennedy was in office. After LBJ ramped up, 16,899 Americans died there in 1967 alone. JFK also ultimately made a good decision not to support an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, although his timing, like Trump's when he recalled the planes from Iran, was terrible. Finally, resolving the Cuban missile crisis by withdrawing our nuclear weapons from Turkey made the world a safer place.

As to your point, yeah, Jimmy Dore does kind of go off the deep end at the end of the video.

[QUOTE=EihTooms;2831232]The failure of major corporate or top marginal tax rate cuts to contribute much if anything to the economy, much less "create jobs" in any meaningful way, has been well known and documented since forever.

[B]Profits Without Prosperity[/B]

[URL]https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity[/URL]

[B]Why Dont Jobs and Corporate Profits Match Up?[/B]

[URL]https://business.time.com/2011/06/03/why-dont-jobs-and-corporate-profits-match-up/[/URL]

[B]Searching for supply-side effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act[/B]

[URL]https://www.brookings.edu/articles/searching-for-supply-side-effects-of-the-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act/[/URL]

These latest Repub Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cuts were no exception to that repeated and utterly predictable result.

Yes, thank you so-called president Trump, Paul Ryan, Moscow Mitch McConnell and all the other Republican Congressmen who voted for the TCJA! But let's not leave out a big thank you to Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, whose similar agenda with their wonderful tax policies all produced similar Great Repub Depressions, Great Repub Recessions, Great Repub Skyrocketing Unemployment Rates, Great Repub Job Losses and zero sustained boom times, historic expansions or historic sustained job gains.[/QUOTE]I've already addressed your brookings and hbr links here:

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2822821]What do investors do with cash they receive from buybacks and dividends? They reinvest the money. In the process our economy becomes more efficient. Cash flow realized from buggy manufacturers was recycled into automobile manufacturing for example.

As to the Brookings article, they were absolutely right: "By only analyzing results through 2019, we focused only on short-term effects, which may be a poor guide to the longer run. Short-term growth dynamics typically are dominated by changes in aggregate demand while long-term growth stems from changes in supply. Both [B]experts[/B] and advocates emphasize that the supply-side process may take a significant amount of time to take full effect. ".

You don't close down an operation in Ireland for example and move it to Austin the year after a tax cut.

And indeed if you look at investing cash flows, which include capex but not investments in working capital, that's what has happened. Here are cash flows from investments (negative because you're spending money) per share for the S&P 500 going back to 2017, the year before the TCJA took effect.

2017 -141.34.

2018 -138.90.

2019 -181.10.

2020 -214.82.

2021 -221.41.

2022 -226.86.

Investments by the S&P 500 companies have increased by 60% since the TCJA took effect! Not including investments in working capital.

And corporate profits resulting from this additional investment in America are kicking in too. In fact, tax receipts on corporate income were the third highest in history in 2022!

[URL]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FCTAX[/URL]

Now those numbers aren't adjusted for inflation, but just eyeballing the graph, it looks to me like your claim that the TCJA will reduce the amount the federal government steals by 2. 5 trillion over 10 years is bogus. Total federal receipts as a % of GDP also are up, to the fourth highest level in history in 2022. All under a tax regime last modified by the TCJA.

[URL]https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S[/URL][/QUOTE]

Your links, except the Brookings piece, were before the TCJA. Yes, when companies were paying the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, investing in businesses in America and adding jobs in America wasn’t as compelling.

Please be patient. In due time, I will address your fallacious and hyper-partisan argument that the correlation between GOP presidents and post World War II recessions is meaningful, while the correlation between GDP growth and a GOP controlled House is spurious. I'll also give you another shot at showing the correlation between blood thirsty Democratic presidents and American fatalities in foreign wars is spurious.

[QUOTE=Tiny12;2831264]I've already addressed your brookings and hbr links here:



Your links, except the Brookings piece, were before the TCJA. Yes, when companies were paying the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world, investing in businesses in America and adding jobs in America wasnt as compelling.

Please be patient. In due time, I will address your fallacious and hyper-partisan argument that the correlation between GOP presidents and post World War II recessions is meaningful, while the correlation between GDP growth and a GOP controlled House is spurious. I'll also give you another shot at showing the correlation between blood thirsty Democratic presidents and American fatalities in foreign wars is spurious.[/QUOTE]Yeah, those pre-TCJA links are there to prove how well known and documented it has been that Repub Supply-SideTrickle-Down policies have failed to produce anything of a net positive as advertised "since forever. ".

The post-TCJA link about its failure to do so was 4 years after it was signed and passed. Contrast that to the positives in declining Unemployment Rates, Jobs Creation, Recovery and Great Recession avoidance just 2 years after Bidenomics was introduced, legislated, signed and passed.

Oh, I have been patiently waiting for hard, real world evidence that Dem economic stewardship results in Great Depressions, Great Recessions, Skyrocketing Unemployment Rates and Massive Job Losses while Repub Economic Stewardship does not for 70 years. And looking for it in the data prior to that going back about 100 years.

Patiently.

Waiting.

And Waiting.

And Waiting.

[QUOTE=JohnClayton;2831236]How exactly has this person been "shut down"? He has 1. 2 M subscribers on Youtube. How are his (kooky, conspiritorial) views being suppressed? And by whom?[/QUOTE]The more conspiratorial and kooky the content the more subscribers and the more $ the guy makes. It's a great racket in the modern era. And YouTube is pretty much the wild wild west, no responsible editorial departments to reign the logical fallacies, half-truths, and lies. This while there's no shortage of suckers eager to drink at those fountains.